There is a solution to America’s political problems. It’s well thought-out, well-planned and requires about two more months of work to launch. Two great things about it is that it can succeed without a political battle and without using our dysfunctional political system. But I can’t finish it alone, nor launch it alone. I need a team and funding.

I’m sorry that it sounds so far-fetched. I’ve written extensively about it, but few people can hear it from reading. Consider this possibility: Our common truths about politics are not completely true, they’re cultural myths. And they prevent us from understanding an outside-the-box solution.

Unsolvable: Money in Politics

Money is a big problem in politics, but campaign financing laws are a lousy solution. They require that our broken political system fix itself. Plus they’re like the drug war- trying to reduce the supply instead of reducing the need.

Recall that this has been a known problem for decades. We even had campaign financing laws for years. Yet the problem kept getting worse.

Unsolvable: Corruption

Corruption is a huge problem in Washington DC. Half of US members of Congress and their senior staffs go on to work for the industries that contributed to their campaigns, as John Boehner did recently.

This problem is solvable. The American Anti-Corruption Act was proposed in 2009, but Congress has always been too corrupt to pass it. What do Americans want? A survey found 97% of Americans favor such legislation. But a solution that requires Congressional action simply won’t happen.

The real problem isn’t corruption. The real problem is a combination of members of Congress’ need for campaign funds and lack of accountability to voters. Since they’re not accountable to voters, they’re easily accountable to donors and the parties. Again, we’ve had these problems for many, many years and they keep getting worse.

Unsolvable: Apathy and Ignorance

American citizens are famous worldwide for our low voter rates and our ignorance about political issues. Many startups and non-profit organizations have tackled this problem with all sorts of better voter information. Nothing has worked. Voter ignorance in this last election highlights the issue.

In conversations with over 500 voters, I learned the two reasons for apathy and ignorance. First, what voters know on issues matters very little to most of them. Voters vote for people, not for issues. Almost no voters side with their party on all issues. Over time, elections have become a popularity contest, rather than about issues. Second, most voters find that the more they know, the more frustrated they are. The easiest ways to lessen the emotional pain about issues are to stop caring and to learn less about them.

Unsolvable: Parties

The two major parties have a lock on power, and they’re not giving it up. This is true even though 45% of voters register unaffiliated (independent), and 60% of voters think we need a third party. Again, while Congress is run by the two major parties and members are not accountable to people, this won’t change. In particular, Congress is very unlikely to adopt a voting system like Instant Runoff voting or Approval voting which can give third-parties a chance.

The Solution: Outside-the-box

These problems are all inside the box of politics. Everyone blames others. Inside-the-box is the standard political answer- we need a movement. But it hasn’t worked.

The solution is outside- create something entirely new which requires no changes in law. Give politicians ways to be accountable to citizens, and gives citizens ways to hold them accountable. This gets at the root problem which underlies the above problems. It also vastly lowers the amount of money a politician needs to stay in office. Politicians will be freed from being accountable to donors and parties.

For more information, see our article on accountability, and our How it Works page.

To make a difference, add your email address to our list and make a donation. And spread the word. Especially, connect us with people who want a real change in politics and can help fund our efforts so we can launch.

We can fix American Democracy now. But the window is beginning to close.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that the problem with American democracy is that Congress is not accountable to citizens. In brief, accountability happens in a relationship. Relationship requires communication. This requires ways to communicate. At the tail end of an accountability relationship is firing someone- and we have a bit of that in elections. Almost all of the accountability relationship is just missing.

When accountability is missing, government doesn’t work. Instead, you get corruption, fighting, and other forms of dysfunction. Just like America has now.

The most heroically accountable representative is not accountable

Some members of Congress try very hard to be accountable. My rep, Anna Eshoo, reads and responds to, about 100,000 letters, emails and phone calls every year. 300 per day! She keeps her own database of what people call about so when she has news, she can update the right people. That’s amazing! And it means she’s more accountable than almost all other reps. I’ve heard maybe one other is that good.

Some people contact her office a few times per year, some just once. And most contacts are about one topic. This adds up to maybe 40,000 people, about 1/10th of her constituents, contacting her about a couple of their concerns. This means 90% of voters don’t communicate with her about over 90% of their concerns. So she has little absolute accountability, despite heroic effort to be the most accountable representative!

Accountability is possible

Efficient accountability is possible. 4 years ago I struggled for 8 months to form a team, launch a prototype and do some marketing experiments. I launched a partial prototype, but was unable to form a team. I never got to the point where marketing experiments were possible. Money ran out so I went back to work.

18 months ago I tried again. Twice I almost formed teams offering the promise of stock, but they fell apart before they started. (And I wasted lots of time interviewing people who were eager and able, but couldn’t actually work without a salary.)

I then engaged off-shore teams to build it, but they mostly failed. So I worked on it myself and am very close to being able to demo it. With a decent person or two (a bit of angular front end, and some angular/node back-end), we could launch in a month. But that would take money for salaries, which I don’t have.

Why are we wasting our money?

We Americans spent something like $2 BILLION on the past election and are very unhappy with the results. With $300,000, I could hire people and get PeopleCount up and running. With $2 million, I am certain we’ll succeed.

But I simply don’t have the contacts. I keep trying to reach people, and keep trying to finish the demo (and write a book, and pay bills…), but I have failed, so far. Now, money is once more running out, so I’m applying for jobs again…

Unlike other attempts in this “space”, such as Represent.me. Brigade.com, and Simpolfy.com, PeopleCount.org has a great plan for growing, becoming financially stable and delivering results. (No offense to the other sites, and I love you, but I don’t understand how your solution can make a real difference. I’ve talked with the principles of Represent.me and Simpolfy.com. Brigade won’t talk with me. Nor, for that matter, will Change.org…)

Please, help me help you. Add your email address to our announcement list and make a donation. (Currently, about 30 people have added their addresses, and total contributions are about $200…)

America is trying SO HARD to make our Democracy work. Stop it!

Millions of hours and billions of dollars, for what???

We literally spend millions of hours and billions of hours trying to fight each other to elect better people. And it doesn’t even work.

In the last election:

• 1/8 of voters voted for Hillary
• 1/8 of voters held their noses and voted for Hillary
• 1/8 of voters voted for Hillary
• 1/8 of voters held their noses and voted for Hillary
• 1/2 of voters didn’t vote

Hello? HELLO? Does this seem like it’s working to you?

Millions of hours and billions of dollars invested into working a broken system produces broken results. That’s the way life is SUPPOSED to be.

Analogy- a 2-wheel car

America is like a 2-wheel car. It has a great engine, a nice chassi, and parts of the interior are extremely plush and comfortable. It’s a front-wheel drive car, and has two great front wheels.

Hello?  America, are you listening?  The back wheels are missing!

This past year, we’ve gone on a car trip. We put millions of hours and billions of dollars into driving our car through another election. To someone on the outside, it looked a lot of friction and sparks coming off the back end as we dragged it across the trip. It’s not pretty and we didn’t get very far.

And the congress and presidency we’ve created from it look pretty lame. But that’s the way it should be. What God intended for cars is that if you drive a car with no rear wheels, it works really, really badly.

Stop working so hard.
With a few hours and a few dollars, we can have nice rear wheels

Instead, I propose we supply what’s missing- rear wheels. You have no clue how nice it’ll be! We’ll be able to simply roll along and make progress. It’s not dirt-simply, but it’s pretty simple.

All you need to do is add your email address to our announcement list and donate $20. If 15,000 of you do that, we can fix our democracy. If 100,000 of you do that, I can guarantee results.

If you want to read about it, I’ve written tons. If you want to help, send me an email. If you don’t believe it, don’t believe it. But if you want to take a chance on turning America around, it’s only your email address and $20…

I have NOT been able to do it without you. And without you, the future looks bad for you, and for us. Maybe someone will come to the rescue- a fair number of people have a million to spare (though few of them are less cynical than you.)

My suggestion

Put your cynicism away, for a few moments, and add your email address to our announcement list and donate $20.

America has a system of representative democracy. But it’s broken. It’s no longer either representative or democratic. PeopleCount proposes to fix it, not to go to a system of direct democracy.

In conversations, I often paint a picture of how PeopleCount will help us get Congress to pass popular legislation. Many people’s minds contains a devil’s advocate. It often pipes up, “I don’t really want a direct democracy.” Great- PeopleCount does not create one.

I don’t want to vote on actual laws, which is what a direct democracy proposes

A “direct democracy” is one where citizens vote on laws. Personally, I don’t want that. Even before I invented PeopleCount I was too busy to study the details of laws.

The work of crafting laws happens in committees. Members of Congress and their staffs work through pros and cons and issues and solutions putting together something they believe can work. They look for the most benefit and the least disadvantage and cost. But sometimes, a committee comes up with very partisan, or biased, laws.

The bulk of the work of approving laws is understanding the trade-offs. For instance, free trade is usually a good thing. But the TPP proposes copyright laws that are overly corporate-friendly. And it was created in secret, so the discussions about trade-offs are all hidden. And it’s 6,000 pages long! We need representatives who can, with their staffs, handle this kind of analysis. In this case, we need a Congress that can be a check and balance to an administration which did a poor job of putting together this agreement.

Example: Is pass a term limit amendment a priority?

I just finished a 3-article series about the issue of term limits. Surveys said in 2013 that 75% of America wanted term limits. That should be a no-brainer to pass, right?

97% of Americans want to end government corruption. And 80-90% of Americans disapprove of Congress. This is the overriding issue. If any issue appears to help end corruption, Americans will want it. But that doesn’t tell us whether they’ll want all of them, nor what the priority should be.

Congress might, rightfully, resist a term limit amendment

If America voted on Term Limits on PeopleCount, I expect most representatives would report back that their priority will be to end the corrupting conflicts of interest in Congress around lobbying and the “revolving door” where members of Congress and their senior staff members are rewarded with lucrative jobs by lobbying firms. The big problem is that money buys legislation and wins elections. Term limits just limits a member of Congress to only 12 years of corruption- that’s not good enough.

They might also report back that they’re willing to support individual states voting to limit their own representative’s and senators’ terms or remove such limits. This would allow some states to try this, plus make it easier to undo such a change.

In the next article, we’ll look at another example about climate change.

The last post suggested we solve the basic problem in politics– lack of political communication between citizens and politicians. We want a system purpose-built to support accountability to citizens. I’ve written extensively about how PeopleCount is such a system. This is about its benefits, how it solves or helps solve some of what we usually think of as the main problems in politics.

A system purpose-built to support political accountability

People complain about the parties, the expensive campaigns and the corruption of lobbying and money. Others complain that voters don’t care or are poorly informed.

These are all symptoms of a poorly designed political system, a system where politicians are not accountable to people. So of course PeopleCount solves them.

Parties in Gridlock

Parties are in gridlock because A) parties have usurped people’s power, and B) they want more power, especially the Republicans. The Republican leadership has carried out a war on Obama- their strategy was to say no to everything he did.  Many Republicans were willing to shut down the government entirely. Similarly they’re anti-Hillary.

The remedy to this is to free politicians from needing the party. If Congress simply focused on doing what 80% of citizens want, they’d have plenty to do. And when the easy stuff was done, they could not only compromise, but get approval to compromise from citizens and still please 80%.

A system purpose-built to deliver political accountability to citizens much succeed in these sorts of issues. And if people support it, it can’t fail.

Expensive campaigns and the corrupting influence of money

Money corrupts precisely because campaigns are expensive. Money is needed.

Imagine if we had PeopleCount. Imagine that a member of Congress and three challengers are communicating with citizens for two years before the election, at low cost. Imagine they’re submitting monthly reports and being graded. Imagine citizens are seeing their progress on every issue and comparing it with what the challengers are offering. When PeopleCount is used widely, candidates won’t need much money for campaigns.

Plus, surveys say almost all voters, 97%, support anti-corruption measures. If this becomes obvious on PeopleCount, what do you think members of Congress will do? Do you think they’ll ignore it and get lousy grades on this issue? And 85 percent of Americans want fundamental changes in the way we fund our elections. So yes, PeopleCount will solve this. Things that voters overwhelmingly want will happen quickly.

Accountability to citizens will make campaigns less expensive so money is much less important. And it’ll push Congress to pass anti-corruption legislation quickly.

Citizen care more and be better informed

Today, most citizens feel it doesn’t matter if they are involved in politics. Their voices aren’t solicited, much less heard. So why be informed? Many ignore it.

The worst part is caring. It’s hugely frustrating to care about political causes. To the extent that people care about it, they’re pretty miserable. So many people stop caring, to whatever extent they can manage it. Often people adapt by mostly not caring, and then getting mad once in a while. It’s this anger that the parties, especially the Republicans and Trump, tap into.

So imagine you could go online and just vote on the issues you care about. Suddenly your voice matters.

And then your representative and senators report to you on it. You can see from the way the country votes whether a solution is possible. If half the country wants something and half the country hates it, then either we live with it or we find a compromise. But we can stop blaming politicians and parties and focus instead on educating ourselves and finding a better solution.

You can make PeopleCount deliver on its mission

Will PeopleCount, purpose-built to deliver accountability to citizens, succeed? That’s the wrong question. The empowering question is: How can we make it succeed? First in delivering what its basic promise. Second in delivering more that’s needed.

What more is needed will be covered in the next article.

Let’s create something to solve the basic problem in politics. Commonly we think “the problem” is the other party, or the parties, money in elections, gerrymandering, corruption, and on and on. These are all just symptoms.

The American people have political power, but can’t wield it

We, The People, have the ultimate political power in the US. But we can’t wield it. That’s the basic problem.

So what happens? Our elected members of Congress wield it instead. Sure, one of the consequences of this is that power corrupts.

But they have little power individually. So the parties have organized them, and us, against each other. They’ve convinced most of us that each of us is either winning or losing. So the parties wield the power to continue the fight, and most of their energy goes there rather than to solve problems.

And both the parties and members of Congress need money, so the wealthy have influence. In fact, when Congress does pass new laws, it’s usually laws that the wealthy want.

The parties, the expensive campaigns and the corruption of money are not the problem. These are all things that arise to accommodate our situation. The real problem is the situation. We have a system that doesn’t give people and politicians an efficient way to communicate.

The real problem: a system that doesn’t let people wield power

There are two sides to this problems

1) We can’t reach politicians, so they can’t represent us. We have no easy/fast way of reaching them, so decent communication from us to them doesn’t happen. At best, they can only guess what we want. At worst, some don’t even bother to guess.

2) Politicians can’t reach us. The available communication system is lousy, especially in two ways.

A) It’s expensive: Ads, post-cards, outreach and surveys costs tons of money, so campaigns are expensive. Our current solution is for winning candidates to raise lots of money. This makes it easy for the wealthy to have undue influence.

B) It’s lousy: They tell us whatever they want to tell us, not what we’re interested in hearing about. They tell us tiny phrases and sound bites because the only thing worse than hearing crap that we already know about or don’t care about is hearing a lot of crap about them. If something isn’t in the news, chances are low that we’ll hear about it.

When communication is poor, relationship is poor or missing entirely. What we want is a relationship where politicians our accountable to us citizens. Since the communication is poor, we have little or no accountability.

Let’s solve the basic problem, not the symptoms

So the problem is the system.

But let’s not rush to change it. There are lots of “solutions” floating around today to fix this or that symptom. What we need is a purpose-built solution to remedy the problems above. We need a system that not only enables good communication both ways, but enables the communication needed for accountability.

I’ve written about this extensively elsewhere. That’s what PeopleCount.org is all about.

The next article will be about the effects of this system.